I am with you. I completely believe that the difference is there and that it is probably more immersive.

However, these discussions always feel similar to MP3 192kbit/s vs AAC 256kbit/s vs lossless vs lossless 24-bit 192KHz. Trained listeners can hear the difference between MP3 192kbit and AAC 256 kbit. Perhaps even AAC 256kbit vs lossless. But IRL it does not matter:

- Some people listen on very crappy headphones/speakers.

- Some people listen on good headphones with AAC, but even with AAC on, external sound leakage probably has a larger effect on the perceived signal than compression artifacts of AAC 256kbit/s.

- Most of the time people listen to music in the background, so there is not a lot of attention on it anyway.

- Many (most?) people primarily listen to melody and lyrics and not to the fine grained details of how the instruments sound.

Similarly, a lot of people who watch movies, as long as the image/audio quality is good enough, they focus on the storyline, the dialogs, the general atmosphere, etc.

I am not denying that there is a market for audiophile audio or the best quality image for movie visuals buffs, but for most people these are just overpriced gimmicks. I mean, we used to watch movies at home on crappy, small CRT TVs, and many of us still have fond memories of many movies despite seeing it in a format that could as well be from the stone age compared to even a standard projector used in an average cinema nowadays.

To avoid any straw manning: I am certainly in favor of all the improvements in tech we have seen, it's more that the experience does not linearly with it. More like exponential saturation.